Despite receiving a few Mad Bagger nominations, I think I lack the rigorous focus required to deserve the award. However, I do strive to make my walks as tough as possible. Perhaps someday I will be content to adopt a relaxed and philosophical approach, but that may be some time in coming. This past year has seen outings where pleasure was not on the agenda, but there are varying degrees of discomfort, as the following tales will show. I find that the most draining form of bagging involves driving and running expeditions, especially when the driving predominates...
My completion of the Welsh Marilyns was planned as a relatively relaxed ascent of the outstanding 25 hills over the course of a fortnight. Then there arrived the dreaded news that I was being penalised for my foolhardy encounters with speed cameras. I had a paltry five days driving time available before the inevitable disqualification. Dawn on Saturday found me heading surreptitiously up Hope Mountain (30C), the first of nine hills for that day. This may not seem that many perhaps, but they stretched all the way west to Holyhead Mountain and back to Snowdonia, a drive of 200 miles. Mynydd Nodol (30D) was claimed very laboriously in the fading light. Sunday proved just a little less demanding, with eight hills over 130 miles. The remaining eight Marilyns seemed relatively easy with two days in hand, but required a further 150 miles behind the wheel. I then had to drive home from south Wales to Glasgow. The revocation of my driving licence on the following day proved almost a relief. Mad bagger indeed.
The shortening of my Welsh trip did have the advantage of leaving me a week in hand, surely time enough to gather in a few summits in the Western Isles. Alas, the weather gods laughed in my face as the isles were swept by the autumnal fronts. Four days passed, and only the Beinn Mhor group on South Uist was accomplished. Three challenging hills on Harris remained outstanding with only one day remaining. I could, of course, have shrugged resignedly and left them for another time, but when the day began with the barest hint of promise, it was enough to coax me into action. By the time the bus had decanted me at Abhainn Suidhe, the fair-weather window was already passing. I splashed my way up the track, then up tolerable slopes to reach the moss-enveloped trig point on Tiorga Mor, where I was met with a gale-force wind. I thumped the trig before diving for cover down the eastern slopes.
Uisgneabhal Mhor from the north (photo: Alan Dawson)
At that point most people would have cut their losses, but I drove myself to continue. I crossed from Ulabhal to Oireabhal like a scuttling beetle below the crest of the ridge.
Quite remarkably, the tops cleared, but it was no occasion for halting to admire the view. I plummeted down the corrie to the base of Sron Scourst, glad to be in a relative calm. I convinced myself that the wind was easing a little, and fought my way up Gleann Uisleitir and on to Uisgneabhal Mhor, where the gale, if anything, had marginally increased in strength. Somehow I found the determination to add Teileasbhal as a coda to the day, before enduring the long boggy miles out to the road. The day had moments of blustery exhilaration, but it could not be called enjoyable. And yet it was remarkably satisfying in retrospect.
Another outing involved a two-day trip between Lairg and Kinbrace, with the aim of reaching the two Grahams of Ben Armine and Creag Mhor (16D). No doubt the use of a bike could have eliminated the need for an overnight stop, but I enjoy the thrill of a remote hill from a camp in the wilderness.
Ben Armine from Ben Klibreck (photo: Bert Barnett)
I left Lairg on a morning of indifferent weather, soon to become enveloped by forestry, not shown on my elderly map. Luck and guile saw me through the trees without going seriously astray, and the Marilyn Meall a'Chaise was crossed without problems (another of those teasers whose trig fails to mark the highest point). Reaching the farm at Dalnessie, I joined a series of old paths which encircle the Grahams and suggest relatively easy access. Not so, I fear. The paths are certainly clear on the ground, but are now so rarely used that they are being reclaimed by the moorland. Their surfaces were rough indeed, the only advantage being an aid to navigation. My speed of travel proved infuriatingly slow, but the onset of evening found me on top of the Grahams. Rounded lumps they may be, but the view over a remote uninhabited wasteland offers that sense of delicious isolation which can be absent amongst more dramatic hills.
I will be coy on exactly where I spent the night. Suffice to say that I found a luxurious haven in this empty quarter. The moor extended a long way eastwards to Kinbrace. The track to Loch Choire lodge offered a temptingly easy exit, but I held to the spirit of the outing and forged a route directly towards Cnoc an Liath-bhaid Mhoir. I was thankful that it was a dry spell, as this terrain would be a true slough of despond after rain. From the Marilyn I could see Badanloch Lodge on the B871, and dropped down to the good track leading to the tarmac. Any hope of an early finish was crushed by the total absence of traffic, and I reached the stark outpost of Kinbrace before a single vehicle passed.
Have I learnt anything? The feverish drive through Wales is the sort of trip I wish never to repeat. It had the flavour of an alcoholic binge. While the hills were certainly hard won, there was a sense of cheating, of giving the landscape short shrift. The Harris hills traverse was a grim little expedition in the execution, but in hindsight I felt vindication in having claimed the summits against the odds. Ben Armine, in contrast, was simply wonderful, both in memory and in actuality. A series of understated, lonely summits were treated with respect. It seemed right to reach them at the cost of some hardship, and the difficulty only added to the allure. For me the challenging overnight expedition easily trumps the long drive or the long day. Perhaps this year I will change my ways.
